


kings in the back row

by raven_aorla



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Agent As Unsub, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Ficlet, Gen, Mental Institutions, Reid As Unsub, Trans Female Character, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-03
Updated: 2014-05-03
Packaged: 2018-01-21 17:46:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1558796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raven_aorla/pseuds/raven_aorla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which trauma, drugs, and genetic predisposition do to Spencer Reid what they did to Tobias Hankel - and "Amanda" Jackson makes a new friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	kings in the back row

**Author's Note:**

> Not my characters.
> 
> Partially inspired by MGG's excellent dramatic reading of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart", which you can get on iTunes.

"If you're here to question me again, it's not going to work," she said irritably, taking her usual seat alone at the corner of the game room. All the other patients were male and a few of them hadn't gotten it through their heads yet what a bad idea it was to harass her.

The young man tilted his head, expression far more mild than she would have expected. Then she noticed he wore slip-on loafers instead of shoes with laces (that could be used to garrote someone or attempt self-harm), no visitor's badge, and no FBI badge. His reply confirmed her suspicion. "He knew you. I remember."

Interesting. She beckoned to him. "Jeremy and Khalil are hogging the chess set as usual, but I haven't played a good game of checkers in a while. I don't think I've met  _you."_ It made a lot more sense now why the fed had worked so hard to get her into the best institution for Guilty-But-Insane convicts in the country. Why he'd been so keen on 'fixing' her, somehow.

"I'm not a fan of chess, myself. I remember his games but I don't follow them." He rummaged through the stack of harmless board games (Monopoly had been forbidden a few months ago after that incident with Emilio and the tiny wheelbarrow) and put the checker set between them. "You're Amanda, right? I'll take black, if that's okay."

"Yeah, fine." She swept some of her hair out of her eyes. "You didn't tell me your name."

"I'm Matt. It's possible the Storyteller might show up - I was always bad at predicting him and Spencer didn't know about either of us until four months ago - but he won't hurt you. I think he admires you actually." Matt set up the pieces. His body language was looser than Spencer's, his voice lighter, his mouth perpetually quirking into a smile.

"Did the Storyteller get tired of relying on the law?" 

Matt grinned. There wasn't anything vicious in it. He just seemed to be happy at the slightest provocation. "Left notes that were all references to literature. All the victims deserved it, of course, but Spencer was very upset when he realized. His mother's in a sanitarium herself; she's schizophrenic but not a criminal. He was all worried about that particular disorder but as far as I can tell all of us are sane. Just...splintered."

"He said something once about having dealt with DID before, in suspects." Amanda advanced a piece. She kept her finger on it until she was sure she wouldn't want to retract it.

It turned out to be a mistake after all. Matt captured the piece with one of his, still with his soft smile. "He was kidnapped by a man living as three people. Two of them were murderers and one was an apologetic weakling who injected him with drugs to help him handle being tortured by the other two. The first thing I ever remember, as me, was a few hours after he shot up on his own for the first time. The Storyteller was after he met you. Wasn't a factor in how he treated you. Spencer was thinking about Tobias plus Charles plus Raphael, not him and him and me. But he wanted to come here, rather than near his mother."

Amanda raised her eyebrows. "What does his team think of all this?"

"Cried and swore a lot, depending. Spencer hasn't shown up since he updated his will, left some notes for me in case the memories didn't transfer, and dramatically turned himself in."

"Ever read The Catcher in the Rye?" Amanda asked, capturing two pieces. "There's a bit where Holden gets upset thinking about a friend of his and how the guy who went on a date with her doesn't know about her, doesn't care about her, not even that when she plays checkers she keeps her kings in the back row."

"Is that something you do?" 

"Not with checkers. King me." Amanda itched for a cigarette. Maybe. Or maybe something else. Hard to tell.  

"Checker pieces all do the same things. I like that. Not so much to juggle." Matt crowned her checker piece with a silly 'da da DA DAHHH' fanfare. 

"So where is Dr. Reid, these days?"

The young man smiled sweetly, unconcerned, with that same lightness of feeling that characterized everything he did. "Probably the same place you keep Adam. In the back row."

 

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone unfamiliar with checkers:
> 
> When you get a checker piece all the way to the other side, past your opponent's defenses, your piece becomes a "king". Your opponent takes one of the pieces of yours that they captured and puts it on top of your new king, so you can identify a king by it being two pieces high. Some sets let you flip over a piece and show a little crown picture. Kings can move both backwards and forwards, so they are more strategically useful.
> 
> TL;DR  
> The idea is the character in the Catcher in the Rye is worried about her kings getting captured, so she just leaves them in the back row after they're crowned, where they're safe. Even if that keeps them from doing anything.


End file.
